August 05, 2024
Optimize Your Collaboration Environment
Organizations that fine-tune their IT tools to support new ways of working help users prepare for the future.
Collaboration technology has taken a huge leap forward. As video meetings have claimed a central role in most business environments, vendors are racing to add new features that improve the end-user experience and enable employees to communicate and collaborate effectively from the office, their homes and on the road.
Organizations seeking to optimize their collaboration environments face many challenges, including integrating disparate technologies, providing an equitable experience to onsite and remote workers, embracing automation, and protecting corporate systems and data from cyberthreats. An effective collaboration environment will give users access to multiple connected channels — including messaging, voice and video — as well as co-authoring and sharing features that offer all team members the opportunity to make their voices heard.
To keep up with the constant, rapid evolution in the collaboration space, many organizations turn to managed services from a trusted partner such as CDW. These services can help companies more quickly achieve their desired business outcomes, including increased productivity, lower software costs, better data access controls and a more streamlined IT management environment.
How can your organization leverage digital technologies to create a work environment where everyone is at their best?
Collaboration technology has taken a huge leap forward. As video meetings have claimed a central role in most business environments, vendors are racing to add new features that improve the end-user experience and enable employees to communicate and collaborate effectively from the office, their homes and on the road.
Organizations seeking to optimize their collaboration environments face many challenges, including integrating disparate technologies, providing an equitable experience to onsite and remote workers, embracing automation, and protecting corporate systems and data from cyberthreats. An effective collaboration environment will give users access to multiple connected channels — including messaging, voice and video — as well as co-authoring and sharing features that offer all team members the opportunity to make their voices heard.
To keep up with the constant, rapid evolution in the collaboration space, many organizations turn to managed services from a trusted partner such as CDW. These services can help companies more quickly achieve their desired business outcomes, including increased productivity, lower software costs, better data access controls and a more streamlined IT management environment.
How can your organization
leverage digital technologies
to create a work environment
where everyone is at their best?
Several years ago, the rise of remote work triggered a wholesale shift in the way employees communicate, collaborate and ultimately do their jobs. At the time, it may have seemed that the workforce would quickly shift back to business as usual once conditions allowed employees to return to the office. In reality, the transformation of the workplace was just getting started.
Fierce competition among collaboration vendors, coupled with the swift rise of artificial intelligence, has led to rapid advancements in digital work tools. Rather than treating collaboration platforms as a stopgap, organizations and their employees have embraced these solutions as part of a new normal that incorporates remote and hybrid working styles on an ongoing basis. Today, these tools offer automated transcription, translation, summary and scheduling. They also provide teams with action items and offer easier access to the previously underused data stored in emails, chats, files and presentations.
The evolution of digital work presents an enormous opportunity for organizations, but it also creates pressure for companies to keep up with their competitors. To offer employees the best possible experience, organizations must implement and support not only videoconferencing but also solutions that enable integrated communication, project management and automated insights. Together, these features promote productivity and connectivity among teams, regardless of whether employees are working remotely or in the office.
64%
The percentage of employees who say they lose at least three hours of productivity per week due to poor collaboration workflows
Source: Corel, State of Collaboration Survey, June 2022
As they fine-tune the right mix of in-office and remote work for their organizations, business leaders may find that return-to-office mandates represent a significant challenge in recruiting and retaining top talent. Leaders can mitigate employees’ reluctance to come back to the office by ensuring that in-office experiences are meaningful and necessary to achieve team goals. The optimization of existing technology investments is also crucial to building buy-in for any working style. Organizations must ensure interoperability between new and legacy systems, train employees to use tech tools effectively, and continuously assess the impact of their digital workplace solutions on employee productivity, engagement and overall satisfaction.
How can your organization elevate
the digital experience for users and enhance
productivity in the modern workplace?
Several years ago, the rise of remote work triggered a wholesale shift in the way employees communicate, collaborate and ultimately do their jobs. At the time, it may have seemed that the workforce would quickly shift back to business as usual once conditions allowed employees to return to the office. In reality, the transformation of the workplace was just getting started.
Fierce competition among collaboration vendors, coupled with the swift rise of artificial intelligence, has led to rapid advancements in digital work tools. Rather than treating collaboration platforms as a stopgap, organizations and their employees have embraced these solutions as part of a new normal that incorporates remote and hybrid working styles on an ongoing basis. Today, these tools offer automated transcription, translation, summary and scheduling. They also provide teams with action items and offer easier access to the previously underused data stored in emails, chats, files and presentations.
The evolution of digital work presents an enormous opportunity for organizations, but it also creates pressure for companies to keep up with their competitors. To offer employees the best possible experience, organizations must implement and support not only videoconferencing but also solutions that enable integrated communication, project management and automated insights. Together, these features promote productivity and connectivity among teams, regardless of whether employees are working remotely or in the office.
As they fine-tune the right mix of in-office and remote work for their organizations, business leaders may find that return-to-office mandates represent a significant challenge in recruiting and retaining top talent. Leaders can mitigate employees’ reluctance to come back to the office by ensuring that in-office experiences are meaningful and necessary to achieve team goals. The optimization of existing technology investments is also crucial to building buy-in for any working style. Organizations must ensure interoperability between new and legacy systems, train employees to use tech tools effectively, and continuously assess the impact of their digital workplace solutions on employee productivity, engagement and overall satisfaction.
64%
The percentage of employees who say they lose at least three hours of productivity per week due to poor collaboration workflows
Source: Corel, State of Collaboration Survey, June 2022
How can your organization elevate
the digital experience for users and enhance
productivity in the modern workplace?
The State of Modern Collaboration
71%
The percentage of business leaders who say they’ve seen a positive impact on employee happiness due to hybrid and remote work options
Source: Zoom, “Survey: Executives Want Flexible Work, Too,” August 2022
80%
The percentage of employees who think that remote collaboration is either just as effective or even better than in-person collaboration
Source: Corel, State of Collaboration Survey, 2022
23%
The potential increase in profitability resulting from higher levels of team collaboration
Source: gallup.com, “The Benefits of Employee Engagement,” Jan. 7, 2023
The State of Modern Collaboration
71%
The percentage of business leaders who say they’ve seen a positive impact on employee happiness due to hybrid and remote work options
Source: Zoom, “Survey: Executives Want Flexible Work, Too,” August 2022
80%
The percentage of employees who think that remote collaboration is either just as effective or even better than in-person collaboration
Source: Corel, State of Collaboration Survey, 2022
23%
The potential increase in profitability resulting from higher levels of team collaboration
Source: gallup.com, “The Benefits of Employee Engagement,” Jan. 7, 2023
- HYBRID WORK CHALLENGES
- COLLABORATION SOLUTIONS
- OPTIMIZED DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
Some organizations have struggled to meet people’s elevated expectations for the digital experience. In-office technology can sometimes be incompatible with what users outside the office are running. Meanwhile, organizations must ensure that remote workers can contribute and participate in the same ways their in-office counterparts can.
SUBPAR OFFICE EXPERIENCE: If organizations believe that having workers in the office leads to more spontaneous collaboration and higher productivity, then the in-office technology experience needs to be better than what users can get at home. Because remote work gives employees flexibility and convenience, the in-office IT must be superior, not subpar.
INCOMPATIBLE SOFTWARE: If workers in the office are collaborating on one software platform but a conference room is set up to work best with another, that can cause IT headaches and delays in communication, potentially deterring employees from coming into the office.
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DIGITAL WHITEBOARDS: Some offices are equipped with digital whiteboard technology, enabling users to easily brainstorm, sketch out ideas, and incorporate data from web and productivity applications. However, organizations need to make sure that users at home can access the technology and contribute meaningfully from remote locations.
STANDARDIZING EXPERIENCES: As organizations attempt to seamlessly integrate in-office and remote workers, they may look to standardize their software and hardware offerings onto fewer platforms. Streamlining not only helps to reduce costs but can also enhance security by limiting the number of products that need to be patched, maintained and monitored.
REMOTE DEVICE SETUP: Many organizations now have virtual IT help desks that can set up employee devices remotely and ship them to users at home. At the same time, IT teams also must support enterprise applications running on users’ personal devices and ensure that those are secure.
AUTOMATED TOOLS: By leveraging artificial intelligence tools such as chatbots, organizations can shrink wait times and improve accuracy, delivering a superior customer experience. Automated tools can handle routine inquiries and enable workers to focus on the most critical calls. However, many organizations lack the knowledge and skills to take full advantage of these capabilities.
The Value of Managed Collaboration
CDW managed collaboration services offer cost-effective solutions that enhance employee communication and collaboration, ensuring seamless adaptation to organizational growth and increased user adoption.
We take on monitoring, maintenance, incident management and configurations, providing expertise to help eliminate resource constraints. This allows organizations to stay prepared for the future and focus on their core goals while we handle essential tasks.
Decreased Management Burden: Supporting a collaboration environment internally often requires a dozen or more staffers. Organizations that have adopted Managed Collaboration Anywhere from CDW have been able to redeploy up to two-thirds of their internal collaboration support team members, tasking them with higher-value projects.
Support for Multiple Platforms: Many organizations continue to support multiple collaboration platforms, while others are consolidating platforms. In either case, CDW’s cross-vendor expertise can help reduce complexity and confusion. Additionally, advice from CDW’s solution architects ensures that collaboration environments are optimized for each company’s needs.
Faster Service: With collaboration platforms now serving as the hubs of the digital workplace, employees cannot wait for busy IT staffers to help them get going. The simple processes of moving, adding, changing or deleting users or services can slow down both IT and business operations. Handing over these tasks to CDW prevents this bottleneck.
Smooth Transition to the Cloud: Companies with aging on-premises infrastructure are often looking to adopt collaboration solutions hosted in the public cloud. CDW’s experts can help organizations make the move, meet their deadlines and receive ongoing support for multiple systems during the transition.
Building an effective collaboration environment requires businesses to support several key communication channels. Depending on their needs, companies may provide these through a central collaboration platform, or they may have to deploy and manage multiple solutions. Either way, business and IT leaders must ensure that their tools offer the features, functionality and reliability that employees need to succeed at their jobs.
Voice: In their personal lives, many people now communicate almost exclusively via text, largely reserving the “phone” function of their phones for emergencies and calls to their families. But picking up the phone is still essential to getting business done. Many organizations have shifted to Voice over IP, making network reliability a core component of voice calling. In all-in-one collaboration suites, employees may begin an exchange over text or chat and then elevate the interaction to voice to clear up confusion. Newer platforms commonly offer high-definition audio, advanced codecs, and near- and far-end noise-canceling technology to ensure crystal-clear sound quality.
Messaging: The persistent chat features of messaging platforms have become critical to business communication. Messaging allows users to get swift responses, maintain workflow momentum and enhance transparency. This channel is especially important for members of project teams or business units who need to communicate with one another frequently throughout the day, and who have a shared context that helps to prevent the misunderstandings that can sometimes occur without the nonverbal cues offered by voice and video. Organizations are looking for messaging tools that seamlessly integrate into their technology stacks, including other work platforms.
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Meeting: Nearly every organization has embraced video collaboration in recent years, but relatively few have optimized their meeting environments. Investing in advanced cameras, digital displays, video software and even headsets can dramatically improve the meeting experience for employees, leaders and customers. This is especially important for organizations that heavily rely on hybrid meetings, which can pose limitations for remote participants. By establishing meeting parity, where all participants have an excellent experience, organizations can help users contribute effectively to any meeting. For in-office interactions, users expect well-equipped spaces such as hotel desks, conference rooms and huddle rooms that give them access to high-quality visual and audio experiences.
Sharing and Co-Authoring: Modern collaboration platforms enable users not only to communicate effectively but also to work together in real time from wherever they happen to be. For example, screen-sharing features allow users to present content to others, which can facilitate detailed project reviews or spontaneous brainstorming sessions. Digital whiteboarding offers another avenue for team members to collaborate, providing dynamic visual experiences that enable planning and idea generation among both remote and in-office users. And collaborative document editing and co-authoring features help users to quickly and seamlessly make unique contributions to team projects, with tracked changes, comments and version histories ensuring that the best ideas are preserved and can rise to the top.
By optimizing the digital experience for hybrid workers, organizations can achieve significant benefits and positive business outcomes. Delivering a streamlined, easy-to-use technology experience for employees boosts recruiting and retention. Organizations can leverage automation to increase productivity and improve the customer experience. They can also reduce costs by maximizing the value of their existing technology investments and streamlining portfolios where necessary. Finally, organizations can mitigate risks by deploying a cybersecurity strategy designed for hybrid work.
The technology an organization invests in sends a signal to current and prospective employees about its culture and capabilities.
Achieve Productivity Faster: With many organizations hiring employees who may live far away from corporate offices, sending fully provisioned and secured devices to new workers is critical in terms of cost and productivity. Employees who receive these devices can start working and access critical business applications right away, without having to connect with IT staff members.
Streamline Software Costs: Perhaps an organization purchased a software suite for collaboration, but IT and business leaders have observed that employees are using only a fraction of the features the organization is paying for. Through software asset management tools and advisory services from trusted third parties, organizations can quantify the usage and value they are getting from their software. This may lead them to streamline their software portfolios and reduce costs, allowing them to invest in tools that hybrid workers will use more fully.
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Control Access to Data: Ultimately, an optimized hybrid work experience will give employees access to the right data at the right time. For example, a select group of users could get access to a new internal enterprise application on their smartphones, but that access would be strictly controlled. The goal is to enable users to be productive and do their jobs from anywhere while also mitigating security concerns.
Reduce the Burden on IT Teams: Supporting the day-to-day operation of an organization’s hybrid work environment is not a revenue-generating task. Many IT and business executives prefer to offload maintenance responsibilities to a trusted partner. By using managed services for collaboration technology, organizations can reduce their data center footprint, streamline support and speed up services to users while accommodating different platforms and enabling one-stop management for functions such as ticketing, reporting and billing.
Harness Low-Code/No-Code Tools: Low-code and no-code development tools enable end users who may not have coding skills to become citizen developers, creating apps without needing to involve IT resources or programmers. These tools offer drag-and-drop functionality and templates for common features such as e-commerce capabilities. They can help organizations dramatically increase the speed and efficiency with which they deploy new applications.
Integrate CRM Capabilities: Many organizations are integrating their customer relationship management tools within their digital work environments. By providing employees with greater CRM capabilities, organizations can help them to be more proactive and improve customer engagement. For example, a fully integrated CRM system can alert a user in the contact center that the customer they’re interacting with recently placed an order, then provide information about the order to enable a better customer experience.
Looking to optimize your
collaboration environment?
See how solutions and services
from CDW can help.
